The
Clark spelling
generally outnumbers the Clarke spelling in the English-speaking world
today.The table below shows the current
estimates of these numbers.

Numbers (000's)

Clark

Clarke

Total

UK

146

151

297

Ireland

-

14

14

America

176

22

198

Canada

52

39

91

Elsewhere

46

40

86

Total

420

266

686

Clarke
is more common in East
Anglia and the Midlands, as well as in Ireland.Clark is the Scottish spelling.And the Clark spelling predominates in America.

Clark and Clarke as a Surname

Mark
Lower
had the following to say about the surnames Clark and Clarke in his
1860 book Dictionary of Family Names in the United
Kingdom.

“Clark
and Clarke come from
the Latin clericus and the French le clerc
and means a learned person -
that is, one who could in old times read and write.These were accomplishments not so rare as we
are sometimes inclined to think since this is among the commonest of
surnames.

Clark stands 27th and Clarke 39th in the
Registrar General's comparative list.For 33,557 Smiths registered within a given period, there were
12,229
Clarks and Clarkes.Thus for every three
hammermen we have at least one 'ready writer.'

As
a surname, Clarke appears frequently to
have aliased some other appellative.For
instance the baronet family Clarke of Salford, originally Woodchurch
from the
parish of that name in Kent, soon after the Conquest became Clarkes (Le
Clerc)
in consequence of a marriage with an heiress and the family for some
generations wrote themselves "Woodchurch alias Le Clerc," and vice
versa, until at length the territorial appellation succumbed to the
professional one."

The Clarkes of Norwich

Edward
Clarke was a successful cloth manufacturer in
Norwich in the late 17th century who was described by his son Samuel as
follows:

“My
father was a person of an
excellent natural capacity and of an untainted reputation for probity
and all
virtue, one whose most excellent character recommended him so to the
citizens
of Norwich that they chose him without, nay against, his own
inclination to
represent them in Parliament.”

This
statement may have been something of an exaggeration.In fact Clarke was only elected in 1701 after
a stiff contest.After being
defeated
in 1702 and at a by-election in 1703, Clarke withdrew from political
life.

Edward and his wife Hannah raised two
distinguished sons, Samuel and John.Samuel became a very influential theological writer of his time.John became Dean of Salisbury.

The Clarks of
Paisley

The
Clarks were said to
have been descended from old Covenanters in Scotland and were “devoutly
pious
and God-fearing.”The first record of
them was Allan Clark, a farmer at Dykebar in the early 1700’s.Son William died in 1752 and his wife Agnes,
unable to run their farm, moved with her six children to the new town
of
Paisley.All four of her sons became
involved in the thriving textile trade there.

These
Clarks became mill owners and played an important role in developing
Paisley’s thread manufacturing industry.James Clark was the first in 1817 to build a factory for the
production
of cotton thread.There were various
Clark enterprises over the next fifty years until James Clark’s sons
consolidated
the business as J & R Clark in 1867 under the leadership of John
Clark.

John
Clark built the Atlantic and Pacific
mills in the 1870’s.These mills
employed more than 3,000 people and had a combined capacity of 230,000
spindles.John’s brother Alexander
meanwhile had developed Clark mills in America.

Sailing
was John Clark's
relaxation.In 1889 he became the
Commodore of the Royal Clyde Yacht Club and remained in that position
until his
death. His yachts, the Vanduara
and Mohican, were both used to compete in races.The steam yacht Mohican
carried him to America on business as well as on cruises to
the Mediterranean.He died unmarried in
1894.

Clarks from Ulster to
Indiana

John
Clark, Scots Irish
from Coleraine in Ulster, crossed the Atlantic to America with his wife
Agnes
and their children sometime around 1720.

Shortly
after their arrival, they came to Worcester, a Presbyterian-founded
town and center for the Scots Irish, in Massachusetts. Since they were
probably
farmers, it is unlikely that they settled in the town itself. In fact
there is
evidence that they settled northwest of the town of Worcester around
the towns
of Rutland and Holden as later Clarks of the family were born in
Rutland.They remained part of a
close-knit Scots-Irish
community whose center was the Presbyterian church.

In 1739 the family set out with other Scots
Irish and settled the town of Colerain, named after Coleraine in
Ireland
(John’s birthplace) and located some fifty miles northwest of
Worcester. John was apparently still alive
in 1786 and
the family moved again to Washington county, New York.They moved a third time in 1803 to Windham
county, Vermont.In each case they
exchanged one Scots Irish community for another.

The
next move occurred in 1815.The Clarks
then set out for Indiana which had
just been admitted as a state of the Union.The promise was the rich farmlands which were said to be
available
there.They were, however, leaving the
cosy familiarity of their Scots Irish neighbors.

Huguette
Clark the Heiress

Her
father W. A. Clark had been born in a log cabin,
discovered incredible riches in copper in Montana territory after the
Civil
War, was thought to be as rich as Rockefeller, founded Las Vegas, and
was
pushed out of the U.S. Senate for bribery.

Huguette
Clark, born in 1906, was the second daughter of Clark by his second
wife. She held
a ticket on the Titanic in 1912 and was still alive in
New York City long after 9/11.She grew
up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling on
Fifth Avenue
with 121 rooms for a family of four.She
owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius
violin, and
a vast collection of antique dolls.

But
distrustful
of outsiders she became reclusive.The
last photograph of her to be published during her lifetime was taken in
1928.She in fact lived out her last
twenty years in a simple hospital room, devoting her wealth to her art
and
buying gifts for friends.Meanwhile her fantastic homes in Santa Barbara and Connecticut
and New
York City were unoccupied but still maintained by servants.

Upon
her death at 104 in
2011, Huguette Clark left behind a fortune of more than $300 million,
most of
which was
donated to charity after a court fight with her distant relatives.Bill
Dedman’s 2013
book Empty Mansions charted this
extraordinary life.